A virtual tail model for intelligent vehicle following systems

Autonomous vehicle following system is a branch research in intelligent vehicle of ITS (Intelligent Transportation System). This paper proposes a virtual tail model for intelligent vehicle following systems, in connection with vehicle smooth trajectory characteristics. We suppose that the leader vehicle has a virtual flexible tail connected to its rear center to follow its movement. The tail is in a straight line status when the leader moves forwards, while the tail is in a curve status when the leader moves in curve. The method enables our autonomous vehicle to follows the estimated trajectory of the virtual tail, which is modelled by predicting from observations of the maneuvers of the leader vehicle. In our system, neither communication links between two vehicles nor the installation of special road infrastructures are needed. We record the leader history poses which the coordinates transfers at each sample time step, referenced to the follower moving coordinate system. We adopt the quadratic for curve fitting, because of only one turn and smooth quanlity. We will show that the virtual tail is more suitable to the leader trajectory. Some experimental results have indicated the validity of the proposed menthod.